


Again and Again

by Arlome, aurora_australis



Category: Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears (2020), Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Reunions, Tents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:33:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23611594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arlome/pseuds/Arlome, https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurora_australis/pseuds/aurora_australis
Summary: *SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE**SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE**SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE*Jack Robinson had watched Phryne Fisher fly away from him twice in his life - once for her father and once for adventure. The second time had stung until it had slayed, when what had barely begun had ended for good. Or so he had thought.But sometimes, sometimes, you get a second chance.
Relationships: Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson
Comments: 47
Kudos: 203





	Again and Again

**Author's Note:**

> So, magical repeating 1929s aside, Arlome and I subscribe to the idea that _Crypt of Tears_ is NOT a direct followup to 3x8, that Phryne returned to Melbourne shortly after leaving with her father, started up something with Jack and _then_ flew away again for some unknown reason, leading into Crypt of Tears, and leaving things unresolved with Jack back in Melbourne. 
> 
> This is the tent scene through that lens.

“By the way… there wasn’t really a tarantula.”

He’s not entirely certain that’s true, but does not say as much — she’s already faced one fear tonight, he will not remind her of another.

“Good. I didn’t really shoot one.”

Her returning smile is worth keeping his suspicions to himself and, besides, she’s already removed his braces and is making short work of his buttons so he can’t really find it in himself to care about spiders right now anyway.

She kisses him, or he kisses her — their smiles pressing and merging. The slant of her mouth against his feels like nightcaps and waltzes and footy matches; the scrap of her teeth against his lower lip is hours spent at his desk. Her arms at his neck are more familiar than the streets of his childhood.

“I have missed this,” he breathes into her kiss and feels her Cheshire smile stretch against his mouth.

“Yes, I imagine you did,” she purrs, her eyes sparkling with mischief and he laughs.

His hands grip her hips and pull her towards him in a manner that leaves her slightly breathless. Serves her right for the cheek.

“Not _this,”_ he insists, then thinks better of it. “Well, yes this, but also — “

“I know,” she agrees, her fingers weaving into the short hair at his nape. She’s suddenly serious. “Me too, Jack. So much.”

She pulls him down again, and his eyes close from sensory overload. She kisses each eyelid softly, then his nose, which elicits a charmed smile from him. She kisses the smile in turn, gently, sweetly, before nipping his lip which elicits a groan instead. 

She moves away from his mouth, kissing her way across his jaw, then immediately attacks his neck — it’s a particularly sensitive spot for him and she knows it. 

“That was a dirty trick,” he admonishes, days after the fact. “With the pendant on the bridge.”

“Was it?” she asks innocently between kisses. “I thought I was just sharing evidence.”

“Oh there was evidence all right,” he very nearly growls as she reaches the hollow of his throat. “I’m lucky I wasn’t arrested for indecency.”

“Nonsense, Jack,” she is quick to reassure. “You fit right in; all the ships in the Thames were half mast too.”

He barks out another laugh, then startles one out of her by abruptly picking her up. Her legs immediately wrap around his waist like they’d practiced the move before, which, to be fair, they had. 

He moves forward until his knees hit her bed, then slowly lowers her down. 

She sits back, resting her weight on both arms and looks up at him. He is sure he makes quite the sight — braces hanging down, shirt unbuttoned, almost certainly covered in her lipstick. But it’s his eyes she is looking at with an intensity that steals the breath from his lungs. 

“Hello Jack,” she whispers, a smile on her face warmer than the desert sands at sunset.

“Hello, Phryne,” he replies, cupping her cheek gently, stroking softly with the pad of his thumb. He leans down to kiss her temple, his lips sticking to her beloved fringe for an instant when he pulls back up.

God, they had almost lost this. What a ridiculous waste that would have been. 

It might be better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but it was better still to love and love again. 

And it is because it is again — a second time, a second chance — that he knows her so well he can sense the second she has had enough adoring and is ready for action. In a moment her eyes go from soft to challenging and, dammit, he’d missed that too.

And Jack Robinson has never backed down from a challenge.

His hand leaves her face and travels down to her shoulder, relieving her of her pajama… jacket? Honestly, where did she find these things? Once it is gone he doesn’t stop, as he suspects she suspects he will, instead slipping a finger under the strap of her nightgown and moving it off her shoulder. 

She arches her neck backwards when his lips follow the soft movement of his fingers, and sighs in content. Her eager hands push the shirtsleeves off his shoulders and move to pull the tails of the offending garment out of his trousers with a certain degree of urgency. Jack smiles into the soft skin of her throat and pushes her into the ridiculously luxurious pillows, his knees dipping into the bed as he joins her in indulgence.

She’s not wearing anything underneath the tantalizing cloth of her negligee, as he finds out upon the restless discarding of the mouth-watering outfit, and he sucks in a breath — like a dying man; always like a dying man — at the fresh expanse of her naked flesh. Pale plains of muscle and soft skin, of flushed surface and powdered limbs, tremor and shift under the tips of his wandering fingers. A dip here, a pinch there; she arches and laughs, and breathes and cries out just a little at the dexterity of his movements, and Jack’s chest tightens with his own trapped breath. He maps out her body with his eyes and his hands, comparing this new version of the beloved topography to the one he committed to his memory all those months ago. Phryne’s body is a land both known and uncharted, but Jack is nothing if not an avid cartographer, and his hands measure and sketch and outline the beloved terrains and valleys as his fingers rediscover the landscape of her skin.

They slide down the hills of her breasts, run down the shallow lowland of her taut belly, dip into the crevice of her navel as she arches into the teasing touch. It’s a renewed expedition, a true adventure to the heart of _her_ — a stubborn summit, ready to be rediscovered. And God help him, if he’s not an explorer, a mountaineer, a tenacious bastard with a willful streak.

He’s never wanted anything more in his life. 

Just as his fingers are about to take the challenge of conquering a peak or two, he notices a small scar on her naked hip, new from the last time he’d seen it, and stops his explorations abruptly. 

Phryne follows his line of sight and sighs dramatically. “Oh. Yes. Didn’t escape that train _entirely_ unscathed.” She is being flippant, but he can see the uncertainty lurking in her eyes. Another reminder of her mortality, another reason for him to run scared, to abandon his quest.

But Jack is tired of being scared and he is absolutely done running.

Instead, he ghosts a finger over the newly healed skin. “Can’t take you anywhere,” he grumbles teasingly, before flipping her over suddenly onto her stomach and kissing a slow path up her spine that has her writhing beneath him in moments.

She wasn’t the only one who remembered the sensitive spots.

“Dammit, Jack…” It’s both a curse and a plea as she says it through labored breaths.

“Is that your idea of sweet nothings?” he asks, pleased his excellent memory has not yet short circuited as he is sure it soon will.

“It is if you do that again,” she tells him. So he does. Again and again.

As he does, he stares at the long expanse of her back, and is briefly tempted to take her like this — it’s a position he knows they both enjoy — but finds he has no desire to be so far away from her tonight. 

He had missed this. _He had missed this_ — and he won’t deny himself the sight of her face and her body, flushed and eager, a minute longer.

“Turn around,” he rasps in her ear, his tongue darting out to trace the sensitive skin. Phryne shudders and gasps, looking at him a little defiantly from under lowered lashes; he quirks an eyebrow, curls the corner of his lip in a challenge, and she — unable to resist a dare — complies and turns on her back. 

Her eyes, impish and taunting, glimmer in the soft glow of the swaying lamp; the shadows from the lazy flames echo across her feverish flesh. Her ribcage expands with her shallow breath, her skin rises in goosebumps that have very little to do with the cool desert air.

“Well, Inspector?” she murmurs softly and pushes her fingers into his freshly combed hair, upsetting the carefully coiffed strands.

He doesn’t give her a chance to tease him further as he lowers his mouth to her hardened nipple and slides his long fingers up one parted thigh. The strangled moan she utters as he reaches his destination makes the blood boil in his veins. There’s wetness on her inner thighs and on the coarse curls at the apex of her legs, and her readiness to accept him drives him mad with want for her. 

“This, then,” he mutters against the soft underside of one breast, and pushes a finger into her — then, two — and the stretch of her, and the clench of her, is almost enough to bring him undone.

Phryne writhes beneath him, already wound up and restless, and all Jack can do is watch, watch, _watch_ as she climbs and mounts and rises — _there, almost there_ — in anticipation of the free fall. He drags his fingers in and out of her, curling them a little upward, pressing deep inside her, as she keens and shakes.

Soon enough, she grasps his wrist in a vice grip, traps his fingers between her clenched thighs.

“Jack,” she gasps, biting at her bottom lip. “Jack, you should slow down. I’m...I’m close.”

“Why?” he sighs and kisses the spot just below her ear. His fingers flex and she trembles, her brow furrowing sweetly. 

“Because,” Phryne whines, her grasp on his hand tightening spasmodically. “Because I want you inside me when I… when I — ”

She’s flushed and panting, blood rising high in her cheeks; the sheen of her moist lips wreaks havoc on his legendary restraint. Slowly — almost wickedly so — Jack drags his fingers in and out of her, despite the constraints of her clenched thighs; then, nuzzling the hair at the temple, he presses his lips to her ear.

“I want to watch you,” he mutters, his voice low and gravelly and raw. “I’ve missed this so much — missed how lovely you are when…” words rise and stick in his throat at the sight of her quivering under his hand. He groans softly, completely overcome. “ _Please_ , Phryne; please, let me make you —”

She nods frantically, cries out and shatters, choking on his name and tightening around his moving fingers, and Jack finds himself silently praying and thanking the God he abandoned back in the trenches, for being so generous with his miracles. She still trembles under his hand and he — completely besotted — kisses every inch of her face he can reach with eager lips and fervent intentions.

“Fuck, Phryne,” he curses, the crud word slipping from his mouth with remarkable ease. “That was — ”

But before he has the chance to wax further poetic about the sheen of her skin or the tightness of her cunt as she climaxes, Phryne pounces and flattens him on his back. She fumbles with his trousers, almost ripping them open in her haste; doesn’t even bother with pushing them down his thighs. Jack blinks and suddenly he’s inside her, gasping for much-needed breath at the familiar heat of her welcoming body. His smug grin — he’s not above acknowledging its nature — turns almost manic as she drags his arms above his head, clasping his unresisting wrists tightly. Her hips stutter and fall and grind against his pelvis and he laughs in gasping elation at the sheer joy of their revived intimacy. 

“What was that, Inspector?” she purrs and leans over to bite at his bottom lip. Jack groans in response and bucks into her downward thrust, delighting in her lovely gasp at the sharp motion.

“No doubt one day you’ll be the death of me, Miss Fisher,” he mutters, his hands slipping out of her grasp quite effortlessly. “But not tonight.”

It’s easy enough to roll her on her back, to pin her beneath his canting hips and shifting muscles, to slide right back into her with ease and aching familiarity; and she, her eyes shimmering with mischievous desire, shrieks in delight at the uncharacteristic manhandling, and spreads her legs almost wontenly wide. 

He props himself up on his palms, untangling himself from the hold of her arms, and she whines a little in protest at the sudden loss of his warmth, reaching for him with both hands. His hips slant and slide tightly against Phryne’s tilting pelvis, the deep movements precise and very much to the point. The rush of blood in his ears is deafening, and he finds himself able to focus only on isolated sounds that filter around him; the chopped gasps breaking from Phryne’s throat at every thrust, the chafing sound of his trousers, brushing the soft skin of her inner thighs, the soft ‘thump’ of his braces bouncing off his arse. Phryne runs her hands over his arms, over his shoulders, her fingers digging into his flesh with desperate urgency. She's breathing fast, her brow is furrowed, and when he chances a look at her face, he notices that her eyes are closed.

She’s never been more pretty, never been more alive, and Jack finds himself lost in her; so utterly besotted, so irrevocably enamored by her, so very ardently enraptured and gone. She’s fire and whisky and freedom and joy, and he’s pulled into her orbit, gravitating in the void, inevitably drawn to her brilliance. 

Her mouth falls partly open, the white gleam of her teeth catches the low light from the swinging lamp as she arches her neck. Her thighs press tightly against the canvas of his trousers, the coarse fabric slipping further down his heated skin as Phryne gasps and thrashes underneath him.

“Stay — ” she chokes, her fingers flexing, legs trembling against his hips. “Like this — yes — don’t, don’t — Oh, Oh, Ja — _ah_!”

The sudden tightness of her, the pitch of her breathy cries, the way her thighs shake and then fall open, almost boneless — Jack knows her body quite intimately, recognizes the little ‘tells’; even the months spent apart can’t erase the profound feel of Phryne Fisher coming apart around him. 

“Did you just — “ he croaks; nevertheless, he feels he craves the confirmation. His own breath is stuttering wildly in his lungs, his arms are shaking with the strain of holding his weight, the pressure in the base of his spine almost blinding.

“Yes!” She gasps, eyes tightly shut, fingers still clutching his upper arms. “Yes!”’

“Good,” he huffs, quite lost for other, more articulated, words. “That’s… good.”

Phryne laughs a little, her eyes still closed, mouth still parted, and when Jack renews the deep, persistent motion of his hips, she mewls and smiles and rolls her lips together in content.

She’s soft and satiated, and oh so lovely, and he’s but a man — a man who’s spent months apart from her, from _this._ It doesn’t take long — _he_ doesn’t take long — a few long thrusts and he spends himself deep within her, grunting almost inaudibly, his chin dropping to his chest. Her lowers himself slowly on top of her, his arms shaking, and buries his face in the crook of her neck. The sweat cools on their pressed bodies, their bellies slick with it; they breathe together — short, shallow gasps that turn slower and deeper with the passing seconds. 

Jack slides off Phryne and falls backwards against the covers. Sluggishly, he begins to set himself to right; he re-ties his smalls, pulls the trousers up his hips, his slack fingers fumbling with the tricky zip and button. Once he’s successfully bested his sartorial struggles, Phryne turns to him and presses into his side, her fingers running up the expense of his sweaty abdomen.

“Well,” she sighs, and the timber of her voice is throaty and indulgent. “That was unexpected.”

The pleasant thrum underneath Jack’s skin, the contented buzz in his muscles, die a rather swift and sudden death as realization strikes. He blanches and stiffens, his heart running miles in his chest. ‘Unexpected’, Phryne said, as if she didn’t plan for it to happen. 

She didn’t _plan_ for it to happen.

“Jack?” she asks, clearly worried at his sudden stillness, and presses her palm to his wildly beating heart.

“Phryne,” he breathes hoarsely, turning to her in something that can only be described as apologetic horror. “I — I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so — I didn’t even think to ask — your device, I — ”

The worry in Phryne’s face makes way for fond, teasing amusement, and she leans closer to him and presses a lingering kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“You’re sweet, Jack,” she murmurs, and when she pulls away, her eyes are shining rather mischievously. “But I meant the second… _culmination_. I summoned _you_ here, remember? Do you really think I’d welcome your advances unprepared?” 

Jack blinks at her, his heart slowly coming off its mad gallop, his body gradually relaxing.

“Oh, good; that’s…. good,” he repeats his previous assessment, inwardly willing to kick himself for his sudden lack of eloquence. But Phryne just beams at him and presses closely again, her smile bright and happy, and suddenly he can’t bring himself to mind his unexpected bout of Collins-ness. 

He still regrets the assumption though, even if their shared history supported it. He’ll ask, he promises himself, next time.

Next time.

The words spark a sharp memory, elicit a feeling of regret he’d thought he’d left well behind on a green lawn in London, and he bites back a frown. He rolls a little bit more onto his back, pulling Phryne with him as he does, in the hopes that she will not notice the change if she cannot see his face. But he is quiet for too long and she is as observant as ever.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks softly, fingers moving over his chest in no particular pattern.

“The last time,” he tells her, honestly if also hesitantly. “That last time before you went away the second time.” It might be too fresh for them both to have this conversation, but she has asked and it’s the truth and he isn’t going to start lying to her now.

“We were at Wardlow and I had an early morning meeting. So I rose at dawn, and I got dressed, and I kissed you goodbye, but I didn’t wake you up. After the report in the paper, when I thought you were… I kept thinking that I should have woken you up, kissed you properly, looked into your eyes one more time. I should have said sod the meeting and climbed back into bed and made love to you until the very moment you flew away.”

She is quiet for a moment but her fingers keep making irregular circles. “That would have made for a slightly awkward takeoff,” she notes and he chuckles.

“Yes. And I imagine the spinning propeller would have given me performance issues. Still…”

“Still.”

“Anyway,” he continues, “I was thinking about that last time and what I might have done differently if I’d known it was the last time, that’s all.” He looks up at that, his eyes on the fluttering ceiling of her tent.

Phryne pushes herself up on her elbow and cups his cheek to turn his face back to her.

“But it wasn’t the last time. And neither is this. And anyway, there’s nothing I’d have wanted you to do differently. I just want you, Jack. Always. Just you.”

She leans down to kiss him, no intent to take it further, just happy with where they are.

When she pulls back, Jack follows the path of her lips and sways up, drawn to her as always and happy with where they had just been. She smiles sleepily at him and lays back down on her pillow, face to face, heart to heart.

Jack frowns and Phryne mirrors the look.

“What?” she asks.

“I should go put out my candle before we start a fire.”

“Mmmmm, too late for that, Jack,” she drawls and he shakes his head fondly. He does not relish leaving her bed to brave the cold desert air, but it’s preferable to putting out a blaze with the last of their water.

He kisses her nose, then screws his courage to the sticking place and leaps out of bed. He runs next door, happy for the first time all night that his trousers stayed on, and blows out the candle, grabbing his book as he does. He is back in her bed less than a minute after leaving it, but it still feels too long. 

He puts the book on the little table next to the bed and rolls back over to face her. She has an eyebrow raised in amusement, even as she pulls him closer by his hip.

“Afraid you’ll get bored?” she asks, nodding at the book. “I’ll have to be more entertaining next time.”

Next time. 

This time the words make him smile.

“You forget, Miss Fisher, I’m a veteran of spending the night in your bed. I fully expect to be up hours before you are tomorrow and I don’t want to count on the camels for conversation.”

Phryne shrugs, conceding his presumption, but not apologizing for it. Instead she looks more closely at the book.

“Is that what you were doing? Before, when I…”

“Summoned me with a gunshot? Yes.”

“What is it?”

“ _Letters to a Young Poet_. It’s a collection of letters that Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to an aspiring poet early in his career. It was just published; I picked up a copy at one of the ports.”

“In German?”

“Ja.” He winks and she rolls her eyes. “I don’t believe it’s been translated yet.”

“Is it good?”

“So far; I’m only about halfway through. What’s interesting, though, is that Rilke refuses to offer critique of the young man’s work. Tells him to ‘trust his inner judgment’ instead.”

She moves her hand from his hip to his heart. “And is that what you did? Tonight?”

He pauses a moment. Considers. “Sometimes, with you, my inner judgement is in conflict with my better judgement. Tonight, I am happy to report, they were in perfect accord.”

She takes the first part as the compliment it is and the second as the declaration of love he intends, and smiles. Happily. Contentedly. Very much in love herself. 

“Read me some?” she requests.

He quirks an eyebrow. “Are you sure? It’s a bit drier than his poems.”

“Do you have a better offer?” she challenges, and Jack Robinson has never backed down from a challenge.

He leans over to kiss her, just because he can, then settles back on his pillow. “ _Immer wieder_ ,” he begins, because it’s more lovely in the original German, though his brain still translates it as he speaks.

> _Again and again, however we know the landscape of love_
> 
> _and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,_
> 
> _and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others_
> 
> _fall: again and again the two of us walk out together_
> 
> _under the ancient trees, lie down again and again_
> 
> _among the flowers, face to face with the sky._

She is asleep by the end, exhausted from camel rides and international politics and possibly saving the world. And he is almost there with her, eyelids heavy and closing, when he sees it.

Crawling across the blanket on her bed. Small. Black. 

Spider.

Jack is fairly confident it’s not deadly and even more confident Phryne won’t take comfort in that fact. He gingerly extracts himself from her embrace, grabs a glass from next to the bed and traps the small arachnid between it and his book. Then he regretfully leaves her tent for the second time that night, walks a far enough distance to feel confident it won’t return, and hurls the poor creature into the night.

He returns to her bed, to her side, and gathers her in his arms. She stirs, but he strokes her arm and she easily falls back to sleep, none the wiser, for which he is glad. He doesn’t need the credit and with any luck he has years of spider removal ahead of him. 

He can’t wait. 

**Author's Note:**

> The poem Jack recites is “ _Immer Wieder”_ (translation: _Again and Again_ ) by Rainer Maria Rilke. 
> 
> So… two authors! Exciting! And weird! Here’s why we did it.
> 
> Me: So I have this idea for a story, but I think it will require some actual smut.
> 
> Arlome: Hold my ~~beer~~ whisky.
> 
> That’s… it. Really. We started a joint document the same day and then just wrote it together, almost exactly 50% each. We hope you enjoyed the collaboration as much as we did!
> 
> Also, can I just say, during this time of forced isolation and social distancing, what a joyous marvel it was to co-write a story of reunion with someone halfway across the globe? ❤️
> 
> Hope you are all safe and well.
> 
> _aurora_australis_


End file.
